Eating in the Classroom

張貼日期：May 02, 2011 6:21:0 AM

Samantha Huang

A period of time ago, I saw a news report about students of National Taiwan University who ate lunch during the class. And people have different opinions about this kind of behavior. Some think that is nothing and others think it is not respectful for the professor, etc. Because of that incident, I have started to think about a question: is it suitable for us to eat in the classroom when professors are lecturing?

I have read others’ articles about this issue. People who are against eating in the classroom have given some reasons. They feel it is impolite to the professor. They also think students should cultivate a good habit before we go to work because we are not able to eat in the office during the work. When we are working in the office, we cannot eat food as we like no matter whether we are hungry or not. They think that students should eat at the appropriate time. We have to follow this rule when we are at school. Otherwise, we will not be used to the rule that we can only eat at some specific time. No boss is happy to see his or her staff eating in the office without any particular reasons. If we make our boss angry, we may get ourselves into trouble. People who stand for this opinion are almost in the career because they are familiar with the environment of work. That’s why they will advise us to follow the rule and not to eat in the classroom.

There are some opposing opinions about this rule. Some people think that students’ eating in the classroom is acceptable. Some reasons compel students to eat in the classroom－the time for the class may be arranged at twelve o’clock and we will not have time for our lunch or the class is too early, etc. Because we are not like senior high or junior high school students who have the lunch time, we will have to attend classes the whole day sometimes. If we do not eat in the classroom, some students who have the illness may have some problems. For example, they may feel sick during the class or their stomach may hurt and so on. That may cause some troubles to the school. Parents may blame the school and the public will say the school is too irrational. People will complain that schools do not care for students’ health.

There are too many points we have to consider about this rule. Because both sides have their good points, I cannot say anyone is right and the other is wrong. I deem that we have to listen to different voices; otherwise, it will result in some faults. If we carry out a rule carelessly when something happens, people may find our weakness and strike us. This rule can make us consider the issue from different perspectives. I think the most important thing is that we should carry out the rule in a proper way. Therefore, now I cannot answer the question about the appropriateness of eating in the classroom definitely.